God the Lord surrendered His own Son to death on the Cross for the
fervent love of creation... This was not, however, because He could not redeem
us in another way, but so that His surpassing love, manifested hereby, might be
a teacher unto us. And by the death of His Only-begotten Son He made us near to
Himself. If He had had anything more precious, He would have given it to us, so
that by it our race might be His own. Because of His great love for us it was
not His pleasure to do violence to our freedom, although He is able to do so,
but He chose that we should draw near to Him by the love of our understanding.
For the sake of His love for us and obedience to His Father, Christ joyfully
took upon Himself insult and sorrow... In like manner, when the saints become
perfect, they all attain to this perfection, and by the superabundant
outpouring of their love and compassion upon all men they resemble God.
When we find love, we partake of
heavenly bread and are made strong without labor and toil. The heavenly bread
is Christ, who came down from heaven and gave life to the world. This is the
nourishment of angels. The person who has found love eats and drinks Christ
every day and every hour and is thereby made immortal. …When we hear Jesus say,
“Ye shall eat and drink at the table of my kingdom,” what do we suppose we
shall eat, if not love? Love, rather than food and drink, is sufficient to
nourish a person. This is the wine “which maketh glad the heart.” Blessed is
the one who partakes of this wine! Licentious people have drunk this wine and
become chaste; sinners have drunk it and have forgotten the pathways of
stumbling; drunkards have drunk this wine and become fasters; the rich have
drunk it and desired poverty, the poor have drunk it and been enriched with hope;
the sick have drunk it and become strong; the unlearned have taken it and
become wise.
Far be it that we should
ever think such an iniquity that God could become unmerciful! For the property
of Divinity does not change as do mortals. God does not acquire something which
He does not have, nor lose what He has, nor supplement what He does have, as do
created beings. But what God has from the beginning, He will have and has until
the [unending] end, as the blessed Cyril wrote in his commentary on Genesis. Fear
God, he says, out of love for Him, and not for the austere name that He has
been given. Love Him as you ought to love Him; not for what He will give you in
the future, but for what we have received, and for this world alone which He
has created for us. Who is the man that can repay Him? Where is Gehenna, that can afflict
us? Where is perdition that terrifies us in many ways and quenches the joy of
His love? And what is Gehenna as compared with the grace of His resurrection, when He will raise us from
Hades and cause our corruptible nature to be clad in incorruption, and raise up
in glory him that has fallen into Hades?
As
for me I say that those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the invasion
of love. What is there more bitter and violent than the pains of love? Those
who feel they have sinned against love bear in themselves damnation much
heavier than the most dreaded punishments. The suffering with which sinning against
love afflicts the heart is more keenly felt than any other torment. It is
absurd to assume that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is
offered impartially. But by its very power it acts in two ways. It torments
sinners, as happens here on earth when we are tormented by the presence of a
friend to whom we have been unfaithful. And it gives joy to those who have been
faithful.
That
is what the torment of hell is in my opinion: remorse. But love inebriates the
souls of the sons and daughters of heaven by its delectability.
In
love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it
to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up
in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things…
